He was pointing toward the end of the room, and before she saw Circé, Eden saw Thao, leaning against one of the tables with a sullen look.
“You bastard Tiger,” she groaned as they approached. “You guys said you’d let us out, not lock us in!”
“There’s a rocket coming to exterminate all the upper floors,” retorted Eden, annoyed. “You’re welcome to go back up if you want to pulverize all your men in the process.”
A very strange noise that sounded like Loir mimicking a fart with his mouth suddenly resonated all around the room. Eden glanced around and noticed the speakers above.
“Oh, damn it...” she grimaced, as his creepy giggle echoed around.
“Boom! Boom!” he kept squealing.
All the guys present sent glares at the cameras, annoyed by his childish behavior and not doing anything about it. Eden, who already had him in her ears all day long, ignored it and put her hands on her hips, only now noticing how painful it was on her flank. Her fight with Circé had left some bruises...
“Anyway, it’s a matter of seconds now,” she sighed. “After that, we should probably leave as soon as we can.”
“No one wants to stay, I guarantee you,” scoffed Thao. “That bastard had kidnapped a lot of our people to have them do his dirty work... Now we can bring them home.”
Eden nodded, but as she walked past Thao, she finally spotted Circé, leaning over what looked like a large box full of files. She frowned as she approached her, quickly glancing behind to notice Dante was still following her. She ignored him and stood next to the goth woman. Circé was reading a file in Japanese and frowning.
“So this is why I couldn’t find it...” she muttered.
“What is it?” asked Eden, frowning.
“Remember that memory tech I mentioned earlier? The Core wants it bad, it was a side target for me. They promised a bonus if I could find any information about it. I mean, there were many things they wanted to find out and get their hands on around here, but the memory-control tech was kind of on the top of their list, reward-wise... Since it was a myth until recently, I was a bit surprised when I found information about it in the main control room, but thanks to our crazy friend up there, I couldn’t get to the end of it.”
The song “Sorry Not Sorry” suddenly began on the speakers, making both women exchange a glance and roll their eyes.
“...Anyways,” sighed Circé, “I knew there was something about it, as I know the Architect had definitely mentioned it a while ago. The Edge was also looking for it, so... from what we had found up until now, our first hunch was that this crazy, tech-obsessed Yasumoto had made it somehow, but this is the proof he actually had it once, and purchased the original tech from someone else...”
“Who would want that?” frowned Eden. “And what for?”
“Oh, you can do a whole lot of scary things if you can manipulate someone’s memories... I guess the Core isn’t satisfied with controlling their people’s present and future anymore; they want to manipulate their past. What I’m more surprised about is that a Zodiac actually had the means to create that technology. And over a decade ago, too... Look at the dates on the files. This is old. They didn’t keep physical traces of it because they wanted to, they had it because they found some forbidden, twenty-first-century tech...”
Eden took some of the files, frowning. Circé had found this among the many other documents hidden in this bunker. As the safest room in the Red Temple, it made sense they were hidden there instead of anywhere else. In fact, having traces on paper sometimes could be proven to be much better for keeping secrets than hiding them in the Dark Reality, where all the hackers could find a way to things.
“That’s all... This is insane,” gasped Eden. “They really did experiment with this shit on kids!”
“It’s not the worst,” sighed Circé, handing her another file. “Here, look at the amounts. There’s no way the Snake could have financed all of this. They had someone transfer the money to finance this shit, from afar. Someone who wanted to use Yasumoto to hide it, but it worked against them. The Japanese kept the money and sold this technology to someone else to shift the Core’s attention temporarily. Help me look. You can read Japanese, right? We need to find if there’s any trace of whom they sold it to...”
“Ten seconds before impact, people!” squealed Loir. “Ten... Nine... Eight...”
Eden and Circé quickly rummaged through the papers, trying to find an answer, a name, a clue, anything. Eden’s heart was beating fast. Not only because of the rocket about to hit them but because she was scared of who was really behind the funding of that horrible technology. This way of doing things was all too familiar. Someone who had a lot of money, who knew a lot about tech, and who had to act behind the Core’s back. If this turned out to be either her father or Pan linked to those horrible things, she couldn’t...
“Six... Five... Four...”
“Eden.”
Dante suddenly put a document in front of her eyes. Eden was speechless. There was no need to know Japanese to understand the answer. It was all too clear.
“Three... Two...”
She grasped it, in shock. The document wasn’t in Japanese.
It was written in Italian.
“...One! Kaboom!!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
